Hey, this is Leslie, one of the producers of the Tokens podcast. We wanted to let you know that due to COVID keeping us in our homes, there were some technical troubles with the recording of this episode, but because it's such a beautiful conversation between Lee and Ashley Cleveland, we wanted to air it anyway. So please excuse the quality and enjoy.
Episode Transcript
Leslie
Lee
This is Tokens. I'm Lee C. Camp. Stage fright is often classed in American culture as one of the greatest of fears. The stage can carry a sort of terror.
Ashley
But for me, it was the safest possible place for me to operate.
Lee
That's Nashville great Ashley Cleveland. She has won her awards, Dove and Grammy, and she has legendary Nashville friends. In the new documentary about her life, you'll find the likes of Garth Brooks, Kenny Chesney, Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, and more. Ashley was born in Knoxville.
Ashley
Both my parents were extremely cultured and beautiful and really understood the social rules. But underneath there was so much tension and unspoken anger, and all that filtered down to me was: I know something's wrong; I don't know what it is.
Lee
Then her childhood started taking wrong terms. Her parents divorced. Her mother moved with Ashley and her sister to San Francisco.
Ashley
It was a disaster. [Laughs]
Lee
That disaster would yield what Ashley calls a bad habit of behaving badly, and that bad habit would yield difficult consequences.
Ashley
You know, I don't wish addiction on anybody. It's a tough one.
Lee
And those difficult consequences would yield new possibilities.
Ashley
Everything that matters to me, everything that has any substance or value, has come through that lens of sobriety, but it's not just refraining from drinking. I knew I did not know how to live, and I wanted to learn how to live.
Lee
Our beautiful interview with Ashley Cleveland coming up.
Well, I'm delighted today to have Ms. Ashley Cleveland: Grammy award winner, Dove award winner, most recently the subject of the documentary Who's the Girl. Great to be with you, Ashley.
Ashley
Thanks Lee. Thanks for having me.
Lee
Yeah, it's wonderful to get to be with you today. So subject of a new documentary: what's it like having someone tell your story like that on the screen?
Ashley
That was just slightly terrifying. You know, I mean, it's thrilling and terrifying at the same time, but, you know, I think the biggest challenge is to forget that they're filming, so that there's any possibility of being yourself and speaking from your heart. It's not going to be, if you're aware that there's a bunch of cameras documenting everything.
Lee
Yeah, I would imagine it's a new exercise, and I love the old quote from [Indiscernible] who used to talk about maturity, among other things, a lack of self-awareness. And so that's upping the ante on lack of self-awareness, to be able to do that in front of cameras, I would suppose.
Ashley
Yeah, it is, but that is the training, if you're going to do any kind of public performance. The good stuff is right there, when you forget about everything and just be present to whatever comes.
Lee
Yeah. And be afraid to fall on your face.
Ashley
I mean, I am afraid, and especially as I get older, you know, I mean, it's like you get older, you're afraid you're going to fall, and that's literally and metaphorically. [Laughter]
Lee
Well, it was quite an all-star list of guest interviews on your documentary. Pam Tillis, John Hyatt, Garth Brooks, Kenny Chesney. Mary Gauthier, Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Amy Grant, and more. It's quite a list of friends you had lined up for interviews there.
Ashley
I know. Well, I'm sure I called in every favor I ever thought I might be able to get, but they were lovely. I mean, really, that was one of the most touching things, was the willingness of people that were friends and people I'd worked with just to show up. That's one of the beautiful things about Nashville, honestly, and about this community that I recognized pretty quickly when I came here in 1984, was just it is a generous community.
Lee
I would imagine, especially with seeing kind of your life story told there, and as you said, kind of calling in favors, a sense of community and gracefulness in that that's gotta be pretty gratifying.
Ashley
Oh, it was just profound to me, you know? And I'm just... this was the right place for me to land. And I kind of wondered about it initially, because I wasn't really a country artist, but absolutely, it was the place for me to come.
Lee
Yeah. The kind of sense of challenges you had in your childhood home. Have you had practice kind of telling some of your story, and telling a lot of the struggles that you've dealt with?
Ashley
Yeah, I have. It's well-traveled; yes. And nowadays I just... you know, time and perspective softens a lot.
Lee
So, your documentary spends a great deal of time kind of talking about early childhood experiences. As you look back on kind of the storytelling of various kinds of dysfunction or, I think at one point, the documentary says it kind of looks like the perfect suburban family, at what point were you able to see that there were certain things happening in your family system that you had not always been conscious of?
Ashley
I think that was gradual. I think I probably really understood that my father was gay when I was maybe 10, long after my parents had divorced, but I think, you know, my family was a great example of... as you said, both my parents were extremely cultured and beautiful and really understood the social rules. So there was a seamlessness. But underneath, there was so much tension and unspoken sort of anger, and kids have no cognizance of... all that filtered down to me was: I know something's wrong; I don't know what it is. And so then you kind of move into your roles in the family. And , you know, I slipped very neatly into the scapegoat role. So, you know, from an early age, I just was acting out all the time. All the time, and I continued acting out probably until my mid-twenties, maybe beyond.
Lee
So you and your mom and your sister: you moved to San Francisco when you were how old?
Ashley
Right before I turned seven.
Lee
Okay. And you say in the video, that whole experience was a... I think the quote was “was a disaster for me.”
Ashley
It was a disaster. [Laughs]
Lee
How so?
Ashley
Well, you know, I'm from... Knoxville, granted, is the third largest city in Tennessee, but it's become larger and more diverse in the last few years, but at that time, and for a long time, it was a city town, you know, and in a certain part of the city, everybody knew each other. And so there was even... and my mother's parents lived there, my cousins were there, my father was from down the road in Sweetwater, so I had more family there. We had a lot of community, and that was back in the days where kids ran wild in the neighborhood, and, you know, all the doors were open. You could just drop in anywhere and get a sandwich. So, even though my family was in huge distress and kind of coming off the rails, there was an infrastructure there of support and concern that kind of held us all up. And then my mother got this job offer from this company she was working for, which was very open ended and kind of along the lines of: we're interested in grassroots expansion; you can choose any major metropolitan area in the country and we'll move you there, and you can start to sell our products there. And my mother... so it was between Boston and San Francisco. So she chose San Francisco, but you know, the other thing about it was Southern culture, which... that's all I knew, and granted I was only seven, but that's plenty of time to be inculturated. So we go to this incredibly progressive area in Northern California that I had no frame of reference for on any level. And then if you put it on top of that, I mean, even if my family had been intact, even if I had come from a place of strength, it would have been hard. But I was a broken-hearted kid, you know, and acting out, and not particularly appealing as a kid, because I was acting out. And so... man, I think about that and just think it was an exercise in misery for me, and children are children, and they have a keen eye for the most vulnerable. And I definitely was that, you know? I had a lot of outer bravado, but inside I was as vulnerable as a child could be. And so, you know, after sort of the veneer of this exotic kid that talked like this [in Southern accent] was gone, you know, that wore off very quickly. It was kinda like, okay.
Lee
When you think back to a kind of childhood instance of realizing that sort of being an outsider or a foreigner or someone who doesn't fit in, what do you go back to as an instance of that?
Ashley
Well, so, my mother left the company. Actually the company that had moved my mother to the Bay area folded, but she had an extensive background in fashion, so she went to work in the fashion industry. And part of what she did was she would put together runway shows for the big department stores, like I. Magnin and Macy's, back when they did those kinds of things. And she did some work for modeling agencies, mostly behind the scenes accessorizing and putting together models. But having, you know, that said, she was pretty high-fashion, and so she would attempt to dress us in, you know, corresponding high-fashion children's wear, which, you know, sank like a lead balloon at the elementary school, I can tell you that. And so, you know, kind of the culminating event was: I got this black and white rain coat set that had a hat and black and white boots and this black and white striped rain coat. And I think I wore it to school exactly once, and I could... the minute I walked in the door, I knew it was a mistake. And they all swiveled around like the little girl in The Exorcist and were gaping at me, and, you know, I didn't even get out of the coat closet before there were thumbtacks in my chair. And the next day I came in and my desk was gone, and it was up on a hill, on the side of the hill behind the school. And you know, the contempt was fairly immediate and quick, and it just continued from there. And my mother certainly meant well, but you know, all I wanted to do was blend in. You know, and she would do things like try to help us eat healthy. So she'd send, you know, sandwiches to school on brown bread, and, you know, you couldn't trade that for a rotten apple, I mean, nobody... and so my lunches, to me, were just going to be another thing that exaggerated my differences. So I'd throw them away. And once the teacher caught me and made me go up front and pull my lunch bag out of the garbage can, and took each item out to, you know, make it an example, saying, you know, here's a child who does not appreciate the fact that she has a lunch. And, you know, I stood up there and saw on their faces... it sort of cemented my persona non grata for a long, long time. So it was rough.
Lee
So when you look back at that kind of childhood experience and this sort of deep experience of lack of acceptance, how have you become aware of ways in which you internalized that? Or are there ways that you kind of identify that that became a sort of primary lens through which you looked at yourself or that you projected onto others looking at you? Or how did that shake out?
Ashley
Well, as far as... you know, it was a number of years... I don't think I really made or had an understanding that I could sing, or discovered any musical gifts, until I was in my teens. But I can tell you that those early experiences, and then even some that I had later in high school, I mean... on two different occasions, I was in a group where I got beaten up. And I really was afraid, and even to this day, quite honestly, I do not do well in groups unless I have a role that is acknowledged and respected, you know? And so for me, what happened was: I did my level best to avoid groups, but then I discovered the stage, and the stage was like this optimal place for me to be alone and in charge and elevated, even though on the inside I didn't feel particularly elevated. I kind of came out of all of that with a lot of shame. But you know, I think that drive to separate myself: it became a very... it's so funny, ‘cause you know, people are so afraid of the stage, but for me, it was the safest possible place for me to operate.
Lee
You know, that's bizarre. I don't know that I've ever thought about that quite this way. ‘Cause I have, in my own experience, I've had a lot of experience processing and dealing with shame that I didn't have that language when I was a child or adolescent - I didn't have the language of shame probably until my thirties and forties and kind of trying to sort myself out - but I've never connected my own sense of shame with the fact that I've said for years, I am much more comfortable talking one-on-one. I said, you can put me with one to four people, or six people at the most, around a dinner table, and I'm very happy, or you can put me in front of a thousand people and I'll be very happy, but don't put me in a group, because it just makes me really uncomfortable.
Ashley
I'm exactly the same. I mean, I would describe myself exactly that way. It continues to be a real struggle for me, particularly groups where I don't know anyone and I'm not known. So, you know, it was an impediment, quite frankly, to recovery for me, because I started going to 12 step meetings and I thought, well, I'm not doing this.
Lee
Yeah. [Laughs]
Ashley
And ran for the door. Well, it was just that whole idea of being so afraid of being just... just, I felt exposed. And no one was doing anything to me. Really, you know, now I just think, gosh, I love them now. But in the beginning, just being in a room where I didn't have any credentials, where anonymity was really guarded and respected, it was just terrifying, you know. And clearly, you know, I may be introverted, but I'm a wordy introvert, you know? I have no problem talking, but initially when I started to recover from alcoholism, and then later when I started to just deal with my entire family's alcoholism in another recovery group, I would go to these meetings and I would finally get the courage to contribute something. And I'd say about half of what was in my head. And the rest of it, and then I'd just kind of trail off and look around. [Laughs] I just couldn't do it. I was so afraid. So, those kinds of experiences really shape you, I think, for good and for ill, you know? ‘Cause I don't regret... I mean, I've had a wonderful career. I don't regret any of that. And I'm so thankful that I had... you know, it's almost like the Lord said, “Here, take this until you're ready to maybe begin to try and come to terms with these things.”
Lee
Give us a kind of overview or a glimpse of: what was your path from elementary school shaming experiences to recovery? What were some of the key moments that went from one to the other?
Ashley
Well, as I said, you know, I had a bad habit of behaving badly, and that continued, so my mother remarried, and my stepfather and I did not get along on any level. And so, you know, that culminated, when... I think the way our lives were structured is: we would spend the school years in Northern California and then the summers with my dad in Knoxville, which I really loved. And so, my own behavior and my struggle with my stepfather kind of culminated when I was a junior in high school, where... you know, just some bad incidents, one right after the other, and he finally said, “That's it.” And so I went back to live with my father, and my father said he was glad to have me, but he was not saying, “I'm glad to parent her.”
[Laughter]
Lee
That probably worked pretty good for a junior in high school.
Ashley
Oh my gosh, it was like, you know, I hit the jackpot. It was like, “I cannot believe that I have walked in…” I mean, he bought me a car and said, “We'll have dinner together every night.” And I just thought, okay. And the drinking age in Knoxville at the time was 18, and I looked older. I was 16 and looked older than that. Both my parents were alcoholics and were able to drink with a certain amount of impunity for many years, but we just came from something of an alcoholic dynasty, and so I stepped into my role instantly and drank catastrophically almost right away. And I stayed in Knoxville, graduated from high school. I went to the university and, you know, I discovered music, so I was trying to play music. I went to the university of Tennessee for a couple of years. I think my father would have said I was registered there, but I spent a great deal of time finding clubs to play in in very little time. But through that, I think, you know, I had discovered music, which was this thing that was so shocking to me, and probably first of all that I was good at something, secondly, and maybe even in some ways more significant to me - because I was so accustomed to getting negative attention - all of a sudden I had this thing in my life that brought a good deal of positive attention and opened doors for me. Clearly, I mean, you know, I was also developing a severe addiction at the same time, so I didn't do anything to nurture it or develop it. I just used the gift. I just played. And then I met Pam Tillis in college, and we formed this little folk duo, and she was the first person to really give me a sense that I could be a songwriter. So, you know, I had these two things sort of developing at the same time: I had this very serious illness developing, but I also had this gift developing, and neither one could be stopped. And I got to a place where the one thing that did stop me, ultimately, was I got pregnant, and I just... I think that I'd had so much sadness and pain as a child, I thought, okay. I didn't really - at the time that I knew that I was pregnant - I didn't really have a relationship with the baby's father. So I just thought, you know, I don't know if I have anything going for me as a mother, but I know that I want to get help. You know, I don't know that I would have gotten help for myself, but I did feel like if I can get enough help and maybe start to look at some of this for her sake, that's what I wanted to do. And even then it took me a couple of years to surrender, because it's... you know, I don't wish addiction on anybody. It's a tough one. It's like this magic kryptonite when you find it where you think, okay, this is the thing that's going to help me get through this world. This is the thing that is going to help me live, because I don't think I really know how to live. And so how in the world am I going to face anything without it? And so just coming to terms with that took years, but when my daughter was two, I went into a hospital and started to recover, and the beauty of recovery is in 12 steps. And the 12 steps are truly... you know, they were written based on the Beatitudes, but they're truly designed, I just think, by the fingerprint of God, because they are - if you do them in earnest and give yourself to them - they are transformative. And I think that was the beginning, for me, of addressing the shame that I felt. And I can't say... I don't know, I think I'll probably take some of that to my grave. You know, I don't think we work it all out this side of eternity, but I just think everything I have to boast about apart from Jesus in this world has to do with my recovered life. I mean, you know, everything that matters to me, everything that has any substance or value, has come through that lens of sobriety, but it's not just refraining from drinking. I really gave myself to: I wanted to recover, and really what I mean when I say that is: I knew I did not know how to live, and I wanted to learn how to live.
Lee
Yeah. And that seems like that's the beauty of... you know, I teach moral philosophy classes and ethics classes, and the best part of the - in my mind - the best of the ethical traditions is not a focus on what not to do, but it's the focus on8 how to live a good life, right? And the same thing with recovery, you know, the aim being not simply not to drink, but how to live life well, right?
Ashley
It is. it is. And, you know, what drives us into the rooms is: we're dying because of drink. We know it will win. We're not under any illusions about that, so we come to learn, and we have some kind of notion that if we can just stop that, everything will work out. And then you get into the rooms and say, well, it's a little more complex than that. But nothing will happen as long as you're drinking: nothing good. And so you start there. But it's interesting; it's like, it has changed everything and deepened my understanding of faith in a way that is absolutely... well, once again, it's just transformative. And I think about so many. Christians said, “Well, you don't want to go to those people. You can't talk about Jesus in those rooms.” And I said, “Well, you may not be able to talk about him, but he's there.” And it's so interesting to me how enlivened that relationship has... it's almost like it puts real feet on faith, because it's a program of action, and it's not just theology or thinking, and you know, which I'm sure you get into in your teaching. It's like, if you're not doing something, none of it matters.
Lee
You're listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, the good life. We're most grateful to have you joining us. Please leave us one of those five star reviews over on Apple podcasts, and subscribe there or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. Your subscribing and your reviewing is a great help. Remember, you can find our links, photos, books, and related videos from our extensive YouTube channel all at tokensshow.com/podcast. And remember, we'd love to hear from you. Just send a voice memo to podcast@tokensshow.com, like this recent feedback on our episode with Dr. Lauren White on Christian feminism that's gotten quite a bit of conversation. Professor Chris Gonzalez says...
Chris
“I like how Lauren talks about coming to feminism through the Bible, and being informed through scripture about feminism. She has a great way of talking about different waves and iterations of feminism that answer different questions, and how she intertwines theology into that.
Lee
Coming up, the rest of our interview with Ashley Cleveland. We talked more about recovery, late 20th-century racism in the South, and her glimpse into her father's life following a tragic occurrence near the end of his life. Part two in just a moment.
You are listening to Tokens and our interview with Ashley Cleveland.
You were in a group at one point with Keith Whitley?
Ashley
I was.
Lee
And Keith, himself well-known, publicly died of drinking.
Ashley
He did. You know, one of the great impediments for Keith, at least according to my understanding, and I didn't know him that well... we were in this group together; there was a group that a local psychologist had that was mostly musicians and people in the music business, and Keith was one of them. But, you know, he was one of those people who kind of drank pretty infrequently. And so once every... he could go almost a year without drinking, but when he drank, he would just drink; all hell would break loose. But he felt like the rest of the time... you know, he came in and basically said, “I don't understand why I have to be here. I don't understand.” You know, and granted his wife, his manager, his record label, his friends, his extended family all wanted him there, but to his mind: hey, every few months I kind of blow it out, and then everything's fine. But while he was in our group - and he was the sweetest human being, he was a lovely man - but he'd kind of sit there with a smile on his face, and you could tell he was just thinking, why do I have to be in here with these, ne'er-do -wells. And then while our group, during the time that we met - I think we met for a year or two - he went on one of those benders and wound up in a lockdown, like at a place like maybe Parthenon Pavilion. I can't remember, but it was pretty awful. And so the group decided to go visit him, and you have to go through... wherever he was, we had to go through two, you know, locked doors. We had to get permission. I mean, he wasn't going anywhere for a while. And he's sitting in a common area, same smile on his face, just kind of looking around thinking, I have no idea why I'm here. You know, when he died, it was one of those situations where you just think, oh, no, and you know, I'm not surprised. And it was tragic. That's the tricky thing about addiction: is on the one hand you have this drive that, you know - maybe it's an allergy of the body - it's this absurd drive to use or to drink, but simultaneously you have, you know, a voice in your head and an obsession in your mind telling you you don't have a problem.
Lee
Yeah.
Ashley
And so those two things, it's just... for me, I'm a strong-willed human being, and I think for the first half of my life, I was so fearless. I was fearless when I came to Nashville, I was fearless about charging into the music business with little or no credential, other than I could sing and play. And, you know, I just kept after it. But boy, you hear story after story of people who were so gifted and so accomplished in all these different areas, and they came up against this and it took them down. And I'm one of them, so...
Lee
I remember one time hearing a doctor who was a physician, and as I recollect, he was in recovery himself. And he had studied the dynamics of addiction a lot. And he was giving this lecture on kind of what's going on in the brain so forth. And he used the analogy: he said if you have someone who's under the water on the verge of drowning, they can know with their prefrontal cortex - the cognitive, you know, the rational part of the brain - that if I breathe in, it's going to kill me. But there's a... in the brainstem, the brainstem knows you have to breathe, and it tells you, “If I don't breathe, I'm going to die.” And it makes you breathe, and you die. And he said, “That's what's going on with addiction.” There's one part of your brain that can tell you, “That's not what I need to do.” And there's another part of your brain that really thinks that if you don't act out, you don't have what you think you have to have, then you're going to die. I thought that was a very helpful sort of way of kind of getting at: this is how powerful this dynamic is.
Ashley
You know, and it is very true, that whole thing of: so many people are hurt by it. People that love the alcoholic or the addict are not just indirectly hurt. They are the targets sometimes, and they are very directly and purposely hurt. And so it is really difficult to separate the idea of an illness from it being a moral or behavioral problem. But it just isn't. And there certainly may be other issues, but I'm telling you for me, I'm just thankful that I came to a place where I just was able to ask for help. And it just seems like a very small window.
Lee
Yeah. I mean, it has always seemed odd to me that - too often in certain church context - that something like alcoholism, there's this obstinance about accepting it as a matter of powerlessness. When it's, you know... all you have to do is read the Apostle Paul, right? And when he says somewhere around Romans seven, he'll say, “I know what's the good thing to do, and I don't do the good thing I want to do. I do the thing I don't want to do.” And he calls it a law: you know, the law of sin and death. And it just seems to me that there ought to be this sort of beautiful alliance between this sort of approach to our powerlessness and Christian theology. But too often there's been this sort of... Christian theology gets transmuted into a moralism, and the moralism can't see addiction for what it is, it seems.
Ashley
No it can't. And moralism has done more to pervert the gospel. For me... I'll just speak for me. It is the presence of Jesus in me that makes me want to love my neighbor, that makes me stand down when I want to just assert what I want, what I think needs to happen.
Blah, blah, blah, me, me, me. And it is only Christ in me. And I think the idea of moralism gets... it puts it back on our plates. You know, it's that whole “good person” thing. I just wish I... the minute I hear somebody say, “Well, I'm a pretty good person,” I just think I'm not gonna probably be on board with wherever this conversation is going. But maybe that person is a good person, and maybe it's just me that's not a good person. But I don't have a chance at goodness apart from Christ. I just don't. But from there, it's lifegiving, and it includes a deeper morality, which is what you're describing: a morality that offers grace to one another. All of us have some powerlessness somewhere.
Lee
Yeah.
Ashley
And alcohol and drugs are certainly not the only two things I'm powerless over, but they're big ones, and I'm thankful to have been relieved of that. And also for the world that opened up in the relieving! It was like this opportunity to kind of confront all that stuff: my inability to love, you know, the fact that I had such incredibly thin skin and just would love to hold a grudge for the rest of my life. You know, stuff like that.
Lee
Yeah. In the documentary, there's several narratives about your experience being raised in the South. And one particular poignant experience that occurs: moving to San Francisco with a friend of the family, a nanny at a restaurant in Arkansas.
Ashley
Right. Well, we had... actually, it was our maid. I grew up in the segregated South, you know? I mean, even after we moved to San Francisco, I came back to Tennessee every summer, and that was my formative life. You know, the only black people in my life were there because they worked domestically for somebody in my family. That's the only way that I knew them. And yet, a couple of them became like mothers to me, especially as my family kind of disintegrated, and my mother was working, and then my parents divorced, and there was a lot of turmoil and sadness. And these women stepped in and loved me well. And so there was this intimacy, and yet my family and I are as much a part of systemic racism as anybody, you know, in terms of perpetuating that division and that imbalance in the world. But I thought we were the good guys because my mother was... she loved the women that worked for her, and she was working, too. When we moved to Northern California, there was a woman who worked for us, and she decided to go with us because she loved us as her family, and we loved her. And her name was Dorothy. We drove across the country, and when we got to Arkansas, it was early in the morning, I think, and we stopped at a diner, and we went in. And so it was my mother, my sister and I, and Dorothy, and we're all sitting at a table, and no one would wait on us. No one would come over. And it was my mother... and Dorothy read the room very quick. It took the rest of us, I think, a minute to understand what was happening, but Dorothy knew right away, so she was frightened. And at one point she said to my mother, “I have to use the restroom,” and so I went with her because we didn't want her to go by herself. We didn't want her to walk across the room by herself. And then my mother went up and shamed, literally, the wait staff into waiting on us, because my mother had that ability to kind of take command of situations. So, you know, I don't think I'd ever encountered just that kind of bald hatred before. I'm excited to think that we've reached a tipping point where maybe things could really take a turn and change.
Lee
Yeah. It seems to me that your... the way you told that story and prefaced that story is highly instructive for me as a white man, in the sense that I saw you there holding together two things, I think, that are really important. And one is to be able to say, “Look, there was genuine love and there was genuine relationship across the black white divide.”
Ashley
Yes.
Lee
And yet, at the same time to acknowledge: but that doesn't mean that we weren't part and parcel of systemic structures of prejudice or systemic structures of white supremacy. It seems like the capacity to be able to hold both of those together is in short supply in American culture right now.
Ashley
Oh my gosh. It is. And yet it's the only way to something better, in my opinion, because the problem now, I feel, is with the white community: that it is our turn to step up and to hear what has been said to us over and over and over again.
Lee
I wonder, too, if there's not a sort of individualism and moralism, just like we were talking about with addiction, you know? It seems like maybe American culture in many cases is so individualistic and moralistic. Whether you're talking about the right or the left, we can be so individualistic and so moralistic. And when you fail to take into account these structures of power and things that are bigger than an individual's choice, or an individual's will, or even an individual's intention; if we realize there are these structures of power, and that we can be witting or unwitting participants in those, right?
Ashley
Exactly. My family - my family now: my husband and I, and two of our children - were all doing an incredible book that is actually almost like a workbook together, where you journal questions. And it's called White Supremacy and Me by a woman named Layla Saad, and it has really been helpful to me. Some of the things that she points out that I think are so helpful in this book is that everybody has prejudices, but the difference between racism and just prejudice is: racism is prejudice with power. And that whole idea of: can we honestly ask ourselves, “How do I benefit from keeping things exactly the way they are? How does this benefit me?” And, you know, when I start to ask myself those questions, when I start to ask myself, “How am I generalizing? How am I…” Also, you know, one of the things that really has just gotten to me personally, is that... you know, that comment that Martin Luther King made about the appalling silence of good people. And I just think... I think in my life, I have not always spoken up when I knew I should have, or shown up. And as somebody who's really good at acting up, I haven't acted up, you know? I mean, it's like... and one of the things that is really gratifying to me is that my kids' generation: in a significant way, they already get it. They already have insight into this that we, at least I, from another generation and another experience of culture, do not have. And so it's been really wonderful for us to do this together and to hear their perspective.
Lee
Yeah. It's pretty great y'all can do that together and experience that together. Which raises another sort of question for me, going back to your own father. I mean, him being gay in the South and the 20th century: did he ever allow you to see in much to his own life of what his experience was like? Did you get to see what sorts of pain or shame or difficulties he would have dealt with there?
Ashley
Not until the very end. He always... he very much compartmentalized his life. And I think, in some ways, he had his own kind of denial thing going. Like, he never acknowledged... we never discussed it. He didn't have the vocabulary for that kind of discussion or the desire to go there, you know? But towards the end of his life when he had macular degeneration in both eyes, and so he had moved into a really large condominium, there was a young man who was recommended to him who worked as a bookkeeper for one of my dad's friends. And he let this kid move into the upstairs in exchange for driving him everywhere, because he couldn't drive anywhere. And this kid was not gay, but he was on the outs with his own father. There was a breakdown there. So he and my father forged a very close friendship that was more like father-son, but this kid was also a con artist. And so... you know, and there again, you're holding these two things that are both true. I know he loved my dad, but I also know he opened up some credit card accounts and charged a bunch of money, and that he was into some shady stuff. So that culminated in: he told my father he was going on a trip, but he never left town. He went to some bar and picked up a girl in the bar and went back to her apartment. And I don't know if it was a drug deal, I don't know what happened. But apparently the girl's boyfriend showed up and killed this young man, whose name was Dustin, and he cut him up in little pieces, and put him in a hefty bag, and left him on the Cumberland plateau. Just the most brutal. And so of course it would just... when it came to light, it was all over the papers. And my father was just destroyed by it. just shattered. And so, I went - as soon as I heard about it - I went to see my dad, and I'll never forget - and this was really maybe eight months before he died - we sat in a restaurant and he just started talking, and talked about everything in his life, including being gay, what it was like. It was like a dam had burst, and I kept thinking, he's forgotten you're here, so don't say anything or he's going to stop talking. And he probably had. You know, he was probably in shock and very, you know, grief stricken, but it was a window into him that I had never had before. I knew it would probably not... I didn't know he was going to die within the year, but he was almost 80 by then, and so I was pretty sure it would never happen again. So that was a gift to me. And it gave me some... and, you know, I held so much against my father because he was mean, and he was - you know - he was so critical and so kind of high-handed with us. But when I think about how he was trying to navigate what he had been born into at the time he was born into it, I have great compassion for him. What an impossible thing.
Lee
A quote from you. “When you get older, your give-a-shitter goes down.”
[Laughter]
Ashley
Yes, Lord.
[Laughter]
Lee
Tell us about that.
Ashley
Well, the things, as I get older - and I have to say this whole pandemic has really drilled into that even further - the things that I was in such a wad about, worrying about all the time, that would keep me up at night... a lot of them, I can't remember, but it's like, you know, I'm a person who has had quite a few friendships that were sort of on the periphery, but with lovely people. But, you know, I just didn't invest myself that much in any of them. Whereas now I have far fewer people in my life. I don't need all those people, and I endeavor to invest myself. And I think... you look at... at least for me, I looked at my life and thought, I don't think I'm going to die anytime soon. I don't know, but I see the horizon. I see the edges of it. I'm 63. What matters? What do I care about? And so those questions, just by their very nature, have a stripping quality to them. And yeah, there have been many days where I thought, you know, I really don't give a shit about that anymore. I just don't. And I'm glad I don't. I always loved Annie Lamott's comment. She was talking to her best friend at a department store. They were trying on clothes, and her best friend had cancer, which she ultimately succumbed to. Annie came out of the dressing room with something on and said, “Does this make my butt look big?” And her friend looked at her and said, “Annie, you do not have that kind of time.”
[Laughter]
I just think that that's magnificent. And that's how I feel. I don't have time to get all torn up about all that stuff anymore. There are bigger, bigger things to deal with.
Lee
Yeah. Well, we're grateful that you took time to visit with us, and we thank you for that. Great. Thanks so much.
[“Mary, Don't You Weep” plays]
Lee
You've been listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, and the good life. Thanks so much for joining us. Please remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and please remember to refer us to a fellow podcast listener, or remember to share us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, referring others to your favorite episode. You got feedback? We'd love to hear from you. Email us text or attach a voice memo and send to the address podcast@tokensshow.com.
Our thanks to all the stellar team that make this podcast possible. Executive producer and manager, Christie Bragg, Bragg Management. Co-producer, Jacob Lewis of Great Feeling Studios. Associate producer, Leslie Thompson of Rogue Creative Marketing and Media. Associate producer, Ashley Bayne. Engineer, Cariad Harmon. Production assistant, Cara Fox. And our live event production team at Stonebrook Media led by Phil Barnett.
And the music on this particular episode: “Oh Mary, Don't You Weep No more,” taped live at a Tokens Show event in Nashville with Ms. Ashley Cleveland, along with The Settles Connection on vocals, accompanied by the most outstanding Horeb Mountain Boys. Thanks for listening and peace be unto thee.
The Tokens podcast is a production of Tokens Media, LLC and Great Feeling Studios, both in Nashville, Tennessee.